The Art of Cat Herding: How to Manage Geeks

Many folks are wholly unprepared for managing a team, but it does not have to be difficult. Amusing real-life counter examples of “How Not To Manage a Team” will be provided, to give contrast to the real-life examples.

Geeks are a special breed; we do not always know or agree with social conventions in the workplace. This session will help managers deal with their team of geeks.

Here is some of what will be covered:

Running effective meetings

How to be strict but fair

Delegating tasks

Being a good mentor

Workplace politics

Dealing with employee problems:

Negative attitudes

How to talk to an employee who is frequently late and/or unprepared

and of course, the dreaded body odor issue!

People planning to attend this session also want to see:

Sheeri K. Cabral

Mozilla Foundation

Sheeri K. Cabral has a master’s degree in computer science specializing in databases from Brandeis University. She has background as a systems administrator; has worked with Oracle, Sybase, DB2, Solaris, RedHat/Fedora, AIX, and HP-UX. Unstoppable as a volunteer and activist since age 14, Cabral founded and organizes the Boston, Massachusetts, USA, MySQL User group, and wrote the MySQL Administrator’s Bible (www.tinyurl.com/mysqlbible). She currently works for PalominoDB, a remote database management company